What Maduro’s arrest means for China’s influence in Latin America

In the early hours of 3 January, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured by the US military, sending shockwaves around the world. After strongly condemning the US action on 3 January, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs again called on Washington on 4 January to immediately release the couple.

But it is clear the US will not release Maduro. US President Donald Trump stated that the US will “run” Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” can be achieved. He also claimed that Venezuela’s oil industry has long been at a standstill, and that major American companies will enter the country to repair infrastructure and begin generating revenue for the nation. 

China’s strong condemnation of the US capture of Maduro is driven not only by international moral considerations, but also by concerns that China’s economic and strategic interests in Venezuela — and across the entire Latin America region — would be affected.

Just one day before being taken by the US, Maduro met with Qiu Xiaoqi, China’s special representative on Latin American Affairs. According to Venezuelan state television VTV, he expressed gratitude for the “strong ties of brotherhood and friendship” shown by China’s leaders. The two countries have signed more than 600 agreements, which the visit had aimed to review.

Now that Maduro has become a “prisoner” of the US, Washington is expected to further prosecute him on charges such as drug trafficking. Going forward, whoever holds power in Venezuela will be unable to escape US control, and China-Venezuela relations are unlikely to return to what they once were.

In recent years, China’s trade and economic engagement in Latin America has yielded notable results, with China becoming the largest trading partner of many countries in the region. The US’s aggressive arrest of Maduro underscores its continued strong political and military influence in Latin America. For some Latin American countries with close ties to China, Washington’s heavy-handed approach, while domineering, is likely to have a chilling effect, forcing them to give greater consideration to US sensitivities when pursuing cooperation with China in the future.

It is exactly because of these reasons that China issued a strong official condemnation of US actions. Chinese state media Xinhua stated in a commentary published on 4 January that if the US military’s brazen use of force, in full public view, to abduct the head of a sovereign state constitutes a blatant hegemonic act, then the US president’s subsequent remarks completely tore away the false facade of the fight against “narco-terrorism”, laying bare the true face of resource imperialism. Such actions, it asserted, show a blatant disregard for international law, effectively dragging the world back into an era of barbaric colonial plunder.

However, reactions within China’s online public opinion sphere to Maduro’s arrest have been deeply divided. Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of Global Times, wrote that Venezuela has become the only case in modern warfare in which a president was captured at the very outset. He remarked, “Maduro’s incompetence puts all of America’s post-Cold War enemies to shame.”

He added, “Whatever kind of person Maduro may be, he has undoubtedly become a political laughingstock like no other on the global stage.”

Some Chinese self-media accounts even greeted Maduro’s arrest with open jubilation. One prominent influencer described his emotions with a line from the Chinese poet Du Fu: “Beyond the Jianmen Pass, sudden news comes of Jibei reclaimed; upon hearing it, tears soak my robe”, while another cheered that “the Chinese people have one less old friend”.

As for the impact of Maduro’s arrest on China, the self-media outlet Sisyphus Commentary (西西弗评论) wrote that China’s most visible loss at present is reputational. Seeing what happened to Maduro, small- and medium-sized countries will be even less willing to confront the US, significantly boosting the latter’s prestige. The substantive risk, the article argued, lies mainly in whether China’s outstanding US$10 billion in loans to Venezuela will be lost, which depends on whether a new Venezuelan government chooses to default.

The article maintained that China is still operating with a “global business” mindset and has no intention of engaging in full-scale confrontation with the US. Its preferred partners, it argued, are not countries like Iran or Venezuela that are staunchly anti-American, as US sanctions on them are too severe, making business dealings exhausting and cumbersome. Instead, countries such as Brazil and Malaysia — whose relations with the US are strained but not to the point of comprehensive sanctions — are in fact China’s favoured partners.

The self-media account Niu Tan Qin (牛谈琴), which has ties to official media, quoted netizens as asking: if the US can do this to a sovereign country, does that mean China’s own treasured island (Taiwan)…? 

The article added: “We will not talk about ourselves. We are a genuinely peace-loving country. We will study tactics, and unless absolutely necessary, we will not lightly resort to war. But the US has set a dangerous precedent — what the US can do, are other countries forbidden from doing?”

Maduro’s easy capture, some argued, indicates the presence of American “moles” within his inner circle. The self-media account Comrade Cui Zijian (崔紫剑同志) wrote that Maduro’s arrest was the inevitable outcome of long-term infiltration by the US Central Intelligence Agency, combined with coordination from domestic agents.

The article went on to analyse the pathways and dangers of infiltration by various types of agents within China, including government officials, military personnel, university professors and entrepreneurs. It stressed that internal traitors and foreign agents are “invisible termites” gnawing at national sovereignty and a “fatal soft underbelly” of national security, and that purging such forces is a bottom-line task essential to safeguarding national unity, security and development interests.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “马杜罗被抓在中国的反响”.

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